Vladimír Cvrček

“So I returned from the first intended – and cancelled – Czechoslovak race of scout cubs. Immediately afterwards we had a meeting of the leadership and we were told that we’d either transfer under the Pionýr or dissolve. All of them said: ‘We’re through with it’, but at the same time told me that I should carry on with the boys. I told them: ‘Well, that’s nice of you to say.’ And I took a few minutes to think it over. But I saw that it’d all get somewhat deformed. So I told them I wouldn’t carry on either. For two years we were meeting literally as beer scouts. That meant meeting at pubs, not to spark attention and not to look like some counter-state grouping. We were considering building a common houseboat but all the time we pondered on ways which would enable us to carry on. Most of the local clubs which got incorporated in the Pionýr ceased to exist within two years.”

“Everyone had a different strategy. Two years after the ban, the clubs which survived were naïve enough to think that they weren’t under supervision, and so we wore an anchor at the same place as before. We had our reasons – it is a sailors’ tradition to wear the club insignia at their heart. And so on. We used the complete scout uniform with the exception of the lily badge. We used to go around and say: ‘Yeah, we’re smart, we’re doing all of it.’ The symbolic is significant, in particular among the children, and so whenever possible, we used it. And as soon as we got into a positive light and were able to travel abroad, we went scouting all the way there.”